Which Godot Engine Should You Use?

3.5? 4.0? 5.0????? Whether you are just starting your game dev journey or are in the middle of your game, it is tough to know which version of the Godot Engine to use. I break down the three groups you might fall into and whether you should stick with Godot 3.5 or make the jump to Godot 4.0.

💛 Get GodotSky - A Dynamic Sky System for the Godot Engine 4.0

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Resources:

#gamedev #godotengine #godot4

[stayathomedev]

Who has made the jump to 4.0?

💛 Get GodotSky - A Dynamic Sky System for the Godot Engine

Music is From Epidemic Sound

[SpuCodes]

Others have pointed to this, but to share my personal experience:
I am group 1, completely new to everything, I came to the same conclusion as you, to jump right into 4, but then had to switch back to 3.5. The learning resources for complete beginners just aren’t there yet for 4. Yes, all the tutorial makers are switching, but there aren’t enough offerings for complete beginners just yet. While in 3.5 you can do pretty much any 3.x tutorial without problems. And really when you’re just starting out learning to think like a programmer is more important than which language or engine you are learning on, so my advice for now would be to start learning on 3.5, do some small projects, some game jams and then switch either before your first bigger project, or when you have gained enough of an understanding of how programming works that Godot 4’s resources will be enough for you to understand them / once there are enough resources at your level. Use those 0.5-1 years to learn to think like a programmer and learn about game design.

[segsfault]

i'd switch to godot 4 when it becomes stable, when alot of new issues are discovered and fixed...

[GDScriptDude]

For my latest project I am using Godot 4.0 since I want to get familiar with the new version. I imagine that it could be a bit tough for new people to get to grips with some aspects of it without tutorials. But the error messages seem to be maybe better (more informative) than before. Some of the RC releases were unstable for me, but so far, so good with the stable releases.

[maromaro]

Last week I tried to convert my simple game to Godot 4. I expected some problems, but I was smashed by them.
There's a short list of troubles I managed to walk through: missing methods and no info in docs about that,
some arrays are now readonly (wtf?) - also nothing about that,
physics works different - this one I expected.
I gave up, but this was really simple 2d game...
Maybe I'll try in a half of year. Now it's too early. No documentation, no help from google.

[gregorywatine]

I already installed godot 4.0, but i'm at the beginning of my learning and in fact, the documentation in french for godot 3 is really well made on the official doc.
It's not easy to understand the changes, as i'm already trying to understand the basics. And yes, even if i can speak in english, the technical part requires more concentration, so it's even harder when you already have to understand the thing, plus the way to name it 😅

[opusdei]

You forgot the main point. There is more learning material in 3.5 (more courses, more tutorials). So in my opinion it is worth to learn both versions.

[harrybutimnot]

Big. Just starting my game journey. Made a couple scratch games and I have python experience, so I have been picking around for an engine. Lmao dude when you said someone would be happy to just take a downloaded character and make it jump, that's me. Thanks for taking the time to make a video like this.

[hawshimagical]

i see you made a quick recovery from your sickness, thats great. my first instinct is to use godot 3.5 because its pretty much a complete version, and does what i need. but then i remembered how much of a nightmare it was to find any tutorials for blender 2.79 and below. my computer couldnt run the later versions at the time, but the internet does not care. yeah, like it or not, those godot 3 tutorials will all get buried pretty quickly.

[rahmanlinux]

currently learning godot 4 & love it :)

[n__m]

one big thing imho to consider is whether you are deploying to html5 - for testing or delivery. if so the process is substantially easier and more robust in Godot 3.5, and there are also a number of rendering features not yet present for web export in Godot 4.0.

[kitepz]

I'm using 3.5.2 because pretty much every useful tutorial is written for 3.X right now. and I'm struggling enough with learning gdscript myself, I don't really need an extra layer of challenge of figuring out whether I'm getting an error because of my stupidity or because of some syntax changes in 4.0. besides, as I understand 4.0 was kind of rushed, so I'd like to wait for 4.1 just in case.

[Solitario]

I’ve been learning 3.5 because there’s more content to learn from on that version and once I finish that I can easily learn the newer stuff if I need to when there’s more info on it.

[mrmunkee]

I'm sort of in the first camp. I've mostly fiddled around in Godot 3.5 and 4 without diving in yet. I'm an experienced 3D artist and I chose Godot to utilize for any game stuff I plan to do. Most of what I've done in the engine is setting up 3D stuff and messing around with what I can do with that. One thing I'm really waiting for with 4 is a good 3D terrain tool, which I've heard will eventually be added officially.

One thing I have noticed even with older versions of Godot is that other than official documentation which can only really give you info, not technique, is that some aspects of the engine have major holes in regards to the depth of learning about them. One particular thing is that I feel there aren't very many really proper vehiclebody tutorials. There's a lack of them in general, and the ones that do exist just aren't good or deep enough for actually learning IMO.

[hogandromgool]

If your maps are made of smaller preab rooms and you're using the navigation system then I'd highly recommend godot 4. Building and baking the navmesh at runtime is so much smoother and some elements just aren't possible in 3.5.

[vn]

good video! in the past 2 months i have been learning godot 3.5 even watching tutorials for 4.0 and then retro it to 3.5. My question is, should I be worried of using 4.0 because of bugs? I am new into game dev and programming in general, never used unity or unreal for making games. Should I stick to 3.5 because is more stable avoiding bugs that would crush my inexperience game dev in 4.0? or I should just jump into the 4.0 wagen. ( I just realize you just answer my question I the video 10 seconds after ahhaha)

[Ikuti]

I agree that at this point in time if you are totally new and need a lot of hand holding with courses, 3.5 might be better as start point. This will probably change in 0.5-1 year when 4.0 beginner courses start to come out and some 3.5 courses are updated to be working with 4.0.

If you are a bit more experienced with gamedev or godot and are going back into it I say 4.0 and you can still use 3.5 courses, you just need to be prepared to change stuff to fir 4.0. It might be a bit useful since it shows all the changes from old Godot and requires you to understand how to check github issues, old vs new wiki pages etc.

[sanketsbrush]

I switched to godot 4.01 rc. Trust me, except few things everything else is looks same but perform better. Most of the addons are available now on godot 4.

[GarrettTallent]

Caveat to using godot 4. Godot 4 has issues exporting to web for ios devices. Currently, if you intend to share your games using a website (using the html5 export), godot 3's export will work with more browsers.

[voc]

Godot 4, since I am new to it, and have patience for tutorials to arrive. Already used all other engines, so nothing new to me about using the engines. And I want all the candy eye stuff :D And interested in using the OpenXR.